What are the distinguishing features of KASY0?
Several aspects of KASY0 are new: • It uses a new asymmetric network architecture called a Sparse Flat Neighborhood Network (SFNN). When we invented the Flat Neighborhood Network (FNN) in 2000, it won a variety of awards because it significantly reduced cost for a low-latency high-bandwidth network… but there was a limited scaling range for which the full benefits could be achieved. The SFNN concept not only yields significantly cheaper networks within the FNN scaling range of up to several hundred nodes, but also scales the performance benefits to at least 10,000 nodes. • It is the first supercomputer to have its physical layout optimized by computer (using a genetic search algorithm). • It is the first supercomputer to use our new FNN advanced routing software. • It is the first supercomputer to use a version of Warewulf that we modified to use symbolic links to dramatically reduce the size of the RAMDISK image. Depending on when we build our next system, there may be additions to
